Star Tribune
Duluth residents push council to close section of Skyline Parkway after fatalities
DULUTH — Duluthians are calling on the city to permanently close to traffic a popular section of the famed Skyline Parkway after two fatalities along the boulevard this month.
The City Council heard from parkway neighbors and family of the deceased Monday night. They shared stories of speeding drivers and dangerous conditions along the 28-mile roadway that overlooks the length of the city, snaking high above the St. Louis River and Lake Superior.
Kenneth Bickel, 70, died last week after being struck by a car when he was walking on a section of the parkway near Enger Park. Logan Woock, 26, died earlier this month after rolling his car on a western section of the road.
It’s clear speed was a factor in Bickel’s death, his daughter-in-law Justine Bickel told the council.
A longtime resident of a neighborhood near Enger Park, “he was a safe walker,” she said, and had there been a speed limit sign or other safety measures, “Ken may still be with us today.”
A section of the road near Enger Park was closed to traffic during the pandemic to allow walkers, runners and cyclists the space to distance from each other outdoors when the Lakewalk became overcrowded. Speakers said that could easily be done again.
The city’s chief administrative officer, David Montgomery, said the city was gathering input from the community to improve safety along the entire boulevard, but didn’t have anything formal to propose yet.
Councilors, who held a moment of silence for Bickel, were supportive of making changes.
Councilor Mike Mayou cited several sections of the road he deemed dangerous.
“It’s a very narrow road that’s heavily utilized,” he said, and fixes for the entire stretch should be studied.
Laura Whittaker owns a nature preschool along Skyline not far from where Bickel was killed. She’s written to the city several times about safety concerns, as she crosses the road with small children daily to reach trails.
“I see firsthand how dangerous it is,” she said, with vehicles using the curving boulevard like a “racetrack.”
Doris Malkmus said crossings to trails are unmarked, and cyclists and pedestrians grow increasingly unsafe as the area becomes more popular.
The winding road makes drivers feel like they are “on top of the world,” she said, making it an “alluring” place to speed. “We have to be responsible to … make that impossible to do.”
The first section of the historic boulevard opened in 1892, and seven separate sections were joined in 1929. It was designated a Minnesota Scenic Byway in 2001.
The lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church in Detroit Lakes said that a missionary was killed in an act of violence Friday in Angola, Africa.
Beau Shroyer moved there in 2021 with his wife, Jackie, and five children. They were working with the missionary organization SIM USA, founded in 1893 in Charlotte, N.C. SIM USA president Randy Fairman shared in a message to the Lakes Area Vineyard congregation that the Shroyers were one of the first families to move to Angola after pandemic lockdowns eased.
Fairman said many details are still unknown about Shroyer’s death. He said he got a call Friday “informing me that Beau Shroyer was killed while serving Jesus in Angola and is now with his Savior.”
“It is my belief that from his vantage point, he can see how his family will be cared for, and it is not hard for him to trust our good Father,” Fairman wrote. “From our perspective and the perspective of Jackie and the kids, we now must trust Jesus in a season that we never imagined. We must trust Him without requiring Him to give us an understanding of why He allowed this. It is difficult and stretches our faith.”
Troy Easton, lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church, said in a message to congregants that “Moments like these create so many unanswerable questions for us and it adds to the pain to know that we may never understand why our Father has allowed something like this to happen.”
“As more details became available regarding what’s next for the family, what arrangements are being made to celebrate and honor Beau’s life, and practical ways you can love and serve them, we will be certain to share them with you.
Along with his wife, Shroyer, 44, a former Detroit Lakes police officer and real estate agent, leaves behind children Bella, Avery, Oakley, Iva and Eden.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This year, its jump-scares and lore landed it on Forbes’ list of “7 of the World’s Scariest Haunted Houses” alongside a 160-room mansion in California filled with “occult oddities,” a house built on an old cemetery near Chicago, and a haunted theme park in New Zealand built on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital. The Haunted Ship, as the Irvin is known in October, is open just one more night — from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Halloween.
“But this isn’t just a manufactured scare factory,” according to Forbes’ scare scouts, who reportedly visited the ship and had the VIP experience — which includes controlling the dialogue of a disembodied skull as visitors stream past. “In 1964, a sailor died on the ship during a boiler room accident, prompting the Duluth Paranormal Society to investigate the ship. Employees have reported seeing unexplained shadows, hearing phantom footsteps, and had objects thrown at them while doing maintenance work.”
The pilot house of the William A. Irvin is covered in cobwebs during October, a stop on the VIP tour of the seasonal Haunted Ship. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The tour twists through the ship’s nooks, crannies and areas specific to its life on the Great Lakes — like a few gruesome dining areas where bloodied limbs are scattered about. There are creepy clowns and Victorian-era beings who stare wordlessly. A sink runs with bloody-colored water and a skeleton sits in a muddied bathtub surrounded by its innards.
The VIP experience offers a chance to roam through the ship’s living quarters alongside an ethereal character in the role of Irvin’s second wife. She sashays through the space with tales from the past, then allows you entry into private spaces where a saw blade rests in a sink and a body meant for the morgue vibrates with electrical waves on a bed. It offers a chance to dip into the pilot house, where wheels and gears are draped in cobwebs, offset in the opposite direction by a fresh perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge.
The view from the Haunted Ship offers a new perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
There are countless dark corners for jump scares, strobe lights and tight spaces with hidden exits. There is a place designed to trigger claustrophobia. And there are mind-bending questions: Is that a person in that chair or isn’t it? Who is making that growling-moaning sound? What is that smell?
The final question is answered at the exit of the ship, where there is a running tally of how many people haven’t been able to finish the tour (90 as of Friday night) and how many have wet their pants (35).
How many people have opted out of the Haunted Ship? (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Police said they will be releasing details Monday about the shooting death of a 23-year-old man last week in New Hope.
Carnell Mark Johnson Jr., of Bloomington, was shot in the chest Thursday in the 7300 block of Bass Lake Road and died that same day at North Memorial Health Hospital, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
A police official said more information will be released about the shooting later Monday. No arrests have been announced.
